


A Long, Long Time

by aladygrieve



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, Time Travel, endgame spoilers, post-Avengers: Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aladygrieve/pseuds/aladygrieve
Summary: Steve never dreamed that he would be allowed to love them both.A canon-compliant Endgame fix-it.





	A Long, Long Time

Contrary to popular belief, Captain America isn’t indestructible. Not by a long shot. So when the one-in-a-million circumstances that allowed him to survive crashing a plane into the Arctic ice in one version of his life are disrupted ever so slightly, things change. 

A lot has changed, actually: a week ago – or is it eighty years in the future? – Steve Rogers certainly wouldn’t have considered himself an expert in time travel, but here he is. Here both of him are. Bruce had explained that taking Infinity Stones out of their time tends to create alternate realities, branches in the flow of the universe, and Steve? Steve is counting on it.

As one version of Steve Rogers says a tearful goodbye to the woman he loves, another quietly picks up the shield that sits abandoned on the floor behind him. In another instant, one’s gone, and this time, when the other goes into ice, he never comes out. 

The world still mourns a hero, and Peggy Carter still grieves a man, but not for very long. Steve lies low, gathering a few things he needs to make his reappearance believable, until a week next Saturday. When he shows up at 8pm at the Stork Club in London, Peggy thinks she’s dreaming. Then, she catches him by surprise when she nearly punches his lights out, sure he's an impostor. It stings – damn, but his best girl can hit – but he gets through to her in the end. He holds her, and her smile lights up the world.

It’s simple enough to convince the world that Captain America made it out of the crashing plane alive, and if he looks a little older than most people remember him, well, the hardships of war and a week-long solo trek across the Arctic will do that to even a super-soldier. He tells them he lost the shield. Peggy gets the truth of course, about everything, a little at a time, and she takes it better than Steve ever thought she would. She always was brilliant.

What’s more complicated is getting the Army to let him retire, but saving the world has its perks. Even the American military machine will see reason when faced with the combined might of Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark and the Howling Commandoes. He has, they finally agree, done enough fighting for several lifetimes. 

There’s one more thing he needs to do before he can rest, though.

It takes a lot longer to get there in Howard's plane than it does in a Quinjet, and by the time they make it to a bunker buried in the remotest reaches of the Siberian mountains, Bucky has already been in HYDRA’s clutches for weeks. Steve takes out the security camera and punches in a familiar code, and then together, he and Peggy finish off the evil Steve once thought he died destroying – this time, for good. Arnim Zola takes a shield in the face. He falls to the floor with a muted thump and there’s no computer screen for him to reappear in. Peggy shoots a balding man with a bowtie and a ring through heart and knows that good has been done. 

When they find Bucky, strapped to an operating table in the depths of the bunker, he’s been tortured and starved and terrified, and his left arm is gone. But when Steve looks into his eyes, he is relieved to see that Bucky’s mind is still his own. Bucky always knew Steve would come for him, just like he did in Austria. There were times during the torture when he couldn't remember his own name, but he always remembered Steve's. 

Steve hauls him up by his intact arm, and Bucky leans into him as they make their way out of the bunker. He’s been here before, but this time Peggy is here with him, helping him keep Bucky on his feet. 

Peggy sets the charges and the bunker collapses in a hail of crumbling concrete and stone. It is done. HYDRA will never take root in the fledgling SHIELD, because HYDRA no longer exists. The Soviet Winter Soldier program will never get off the ground it’s now buried in. Decades later, Howard and Maria Stark will both live for many years beyond December 16th, 1991. They aren’t even driving that night, because they’re at home with their son, Steve’s godson, who has only ever loved them both dearly. Howard still loves his work, but he loves his son more. The lonely back road stays lonely. 

Together, they go home. It takes some navigating, but they each find a place for themselves in this new version of an old world. Peggy leads SHIELD to be a force for good, and anyone who might have a word to say against her as Director find they have a pair of angry super-soldiers to contend with – or worse, Peggy herself. In an underground headquarters beneath a military base in Jersey, the wall commemorating the organization's founders has two more portraits than it once did. 

There's a pain in Bucky's eyes that never really goes away, but he's so, so far from the haunted shell he could have been. He helps hundreds of wartime amputees find a new normal. The love of science and technology and learning that took him to a World's Fair and made him smile like a little kid comes back, and with it he helps Howard develop a state-of-the art metal prosthesis to replace first his own left arm, then the arms and legs of thousands of veterans. 

Steve, for his part, is content to offer his help when needed, but he mostly stays in the background and makes sure Bucky and Peggy both know how much he loves them. He decides he's spent more than enough time in the spotlight.

They also find a place with each other. Steve never thought he’d get to have even one of them, and now here they are: Peggy’s shining eyes and Bucky’s crooked smile and her strength and his heart and for the first time Steve is finally allowed to love them _both_. It's more than he could have ever asked for. His two brawny, brown-haired sweethearts always admired each other in the way that a only a pair of confident, attractive intellectuals who have each held their own in a brawl can, and doesn’t take long before they care for each other in a way that is entirely their own. Steve loves watching them try to outmanoeuvre each other at chess, or exercise together, or argue philosophy, or sit by the fire and read with their legs twined together. They get a ferocious little scrap of orange kitten, all claws and teeth, and name it after Dum Dum, who is thrilled. 

It’s unconventional, sure, but Steve had always thought the world would only be better off with a little more love in it. 

So Steve holds Peggy close as they turn in slow circles to the sound of a song that is both old and new. He suddenly gives her a little spin, and she laughs as she twirls into Bucky’s waiting hands, one of warm flesh and the other of cool metal. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and the three of them sway to the sweet, lilting melody, passing a kiss back and forth.

Together, they are home.

Legally, the ring on Steve’s left hand represents his marriage to Peggy, but they all know what it really means. Bucky has one to match, a simple gold band. To most of the world, they're SHIELD's co-founders: Steve Rogers, the captain, Bucky Barnes, the sergeant, and Peggy Carter, the director. To themselves and the people they love, they're a family. 

They share decades of happiness, a truly wonderful life. They grow old together. There are no children – an unintended consequence of the super-soldier serums, as it turns out – but between Peggy's niece, Howard and Maria's son, Becca's son and daughters, and more children and grandchildren of the Commandos than they can keep track of, they don't miss them. Bucky is a particular favourite of Gabe and Anita's middle daughter, who pesters him mercilessly for games and treats. He always obliges, a doting adoptive uncle. Sharon grows up as much with the three of them as with her own parents. Steve never misses a chances to take young Tony out for ice cream. Never for a moment do they lack for love.

The children grow up, and more follow, as is the way of things. They watch them grow in a world that isn't perfect, but that is no longer their sole responsibility to save. Everyone knows Tony Stark, but no one has ever heard of Iron Man. Instead, there's a professor in New York state who handles anything nasty whenever it comes calling, and they live in peace. 

But Steve, who’s already done more living than anyone should have a right to, eventually says goodbye to both of them.

Peggy goes first, in her sleep, her mind as sharp as a whip to the very end, and once again, the world mourns a hero. Bucky’s version of the super-soldier serum lets him hang on for several more years, keeping some pace with Steve’s own delayed aging. Sometimes they still get recognized, even after all this time, as the famous war heroes from the museum photos. They walk together by the lake, hand in hand, and passers-by remark on how sweet it is that the two now elderly gentlemen could still be in love after all this time. They had to be careful at first, for too long, the hatred of the past one thing Steve definitely did not miss, but after a while, no one cares if they walk down the street holding hands. They keep a photo of Peggy by their bed and never stop loving her. 

Eventually though, Bucky goes too. Steve is so grateful that he gets to hold him as he dies, whispering their favourite song into his ear as the tears roll down his wizened cheeks, and then Bucky closes his eyes and Steve is alone again. 

It's time. He tells what's left of his family that he loves them, and they understand. 

Then one day Steve dusts off the quantum device and the vial he's been saving for nearly eighty years, puts on his suit and mask – though neither fit as well as they once did – packs up the shield, his old compass, their rings, and a few other mementos, and presses a button. He's missed his old life, but he knows he'll see them all again soon.

He really did mean to return to exactly when and where he left, but the technology was never perfect, and by now he’s long since out of practice. He overshoots the location by a hundred yards, and underestimates the time, ending up by the side of a lake a short way away from the landing pad he was aiming for, a minute or two early. He takes off the suit and the mask, but by now he feels every single one of his more than two hundred years, feels them in the ache of his ancient bones even though they don’t show in the lines on his face. He takes a moment to rest.

He’s sitting on a bench beside the lake when, of course, Bucky is the first to notice him. Steve has changed so much, but Bucky and Sam are exactly as they were the moment he left, a few breaths ago by their reckoning and a lifetime by his.

He gets ten more years with them before he too needs to let go. Ten years to watch Sam bring Captain America to new heights, to help this version of Bucky find his own home in Wakanda, and to share in all their new joys even as they all mourned the life they used to have with him. Not that his decision to leave had come as a surprise to everyone.

Bucky had guessed what Steve was going to do as soon as he offered to take the Stones back into their own time – of course he had. He'd known Steve too long and too well not to have known when he was about to do something that was brave and stupid and, for once in his life, putting himself first. They’d talked about it, for a long time, shared tears and pain and a few desperate kisses just to see if they still could. If Bucky had asked Steve to stay with him, Steve is quite sure he never would have gone. But Bucky didn't ask, and Steve didn't stay. 

So much had changed for them both since Bucky fell from the train. They’d changed. They’d been forced apart so many times, kept away from each other for so long, with so much coming between them, that as much as they loved each other, maybe the universe had always been trying to tell them something. Change is hard and endings can hurt, especially when you have to give up what you want to get what you need. But as Steve had haltingly explained, there might still a way they could love each other – if not in the way either had expected. 

So Steve had given the Bucky who had moved on one last embrace and then done the same, with his blessing, to go find the Bucky who still needed him. He'd offered to bring him the shield when he returned, but Bucky had turned him down. He might have made a good Captain America. A great one, probably. But if there was anything Bucky deserved after everything that had been done to him, it was, as Peggy had said that night in a bombed-out bar several lifetimes ago, the dignity of his choice. He deserved to find a happy ending of his own. Steve has had the unimaginable luxury of two of those, but he’s tired now, and it's well past time for something new. 

They’re all with him now: Bucky, Sam, Thor, Bruce, Clint and all the friends he’s found since he first woke up in this once foreign world – all but a few. Just as they did for Tony and Nat, they're here to see him off. It's time to say goodbye to his other family. 

It’s been a long, long, time, but when he closes his eyes, Steve Rogers is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at aladygrieve.tumblr.com.


End file.
